


afterglow

by yennefers



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Friends to Lovers, Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Pining, or as close to that trope as macden can get
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-02
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-20 16:28:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15538320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yennefers/pseuds/yennefers
Summary: He finds him licking his wounds under the bleachers.Mac’s flicking a lighter under a scrawny little scrap of a cigarette and he’s doing it way too fast. He’s slicked his hair back like a John Wayne wannabe and he has blood crusted on his bottom lip - everyone saw the punch up, Dennis included. Bradley Morgan punching Ronnie the Rat in the jaw for tipping off the school office; it’s yesterday’s news and it happened this morning.“You need some help with that?”“Fuck off,” Mac mutters. Dennis take the lighter anyway.





	afterglow

**Author's Note:**

> cws for disordered eating, severe untreated mental illness and internalised homophobia.

He finds him licking his wounds under the bleachers.

Mac’s flicking a lighter under a scrawny little scrap of a cigarette and he’s doing it way too fast. He’s slicked his hair back like a John Wayne wannabe and he has blood crusted on his bottom lip - everyone saw the punch up, Dennis included. Bradley Morgan punching Ronnie the Rat in the jaw for tipping off the school office; it’s yesterday’s news and it happened this morning.  
  
“You need some help with that?”  
  
“Fuck off,” Mac mutters. Dennis take the lighter anyway.  
  


*           

Dennis meets a boy under the bleachers of his high school: Dennis meet him every day at 7:45, regardless of whether the grass on the pitch is bleached from sun or frost, or hidden under snow, or bloated with rain. He always gets there early somehow, even though he lives further out. Sometimes Dennis leaves him waiting well into first period, but he’s always there - always there, regardless, ready to chew Dennis out for ditching and brush their hands together one too many times when he thinks neither of them are looking. He could leave, and Dennis points this out every time. Mac has nowhere else to be, and he says this every time.  
  


*  
  
  
In the little halcyon that is the summer before senior year, while they’re smoking lazily down by the Schuylkill and waiting for Charlie to arrive with the six packs, Mac blurts out, “Matty Mara wants to be a priest.”

Dennis frowns.

“So what?”

“So,” Mac says pointedly, biting down on his bottom lip. “D’you - do you think I could do it?”  
  
Dennis laughs. Mac scowls and shoves at his shoulder; Dennis laugh harder.  
  
“Mac, in what  _world_ -“  
  
“Come on, dude. I’m serious.”  
  
Dennis sighs.  
  
“Sure you could,” he says, not unkindly - and Mac’s eyes are so wide as he looks up, his lips are so pink when they part, surprised - 

“I mean, the lying, the cheating, the stealing, you’ve got all that down already. Throw a little sodomy in there and you’ll be a fully blown saint.”  
  
Mac’s face falls. Summer ends, just like that.

  
*  
  
  
UPenn is -  
  
Different.  
  
Dennis gets lost twice on his first day and five times on his second. He goes to class; he skips class; drinks til he blacks out; sleeps til midday; he kisses a lot of different shapeless shifting figures in dimly lit rooms with heavy baselines.  
  
Mac calls twice a week. Dennis lets himself answer every so often, and Mac never lets him get a word in edgewise - just talks and talks and talks - and Dennis listens, but only to humour him, curled up under the sheets at 3am with the phone lying on the pillow, his fingers spidered out over the keypad. He is tapping out the rhythm of a number which he’s never called and knows by heart.

Mac talks; Dennis shut his eyes. Dennis is only humouring him.  
  
  
*  
  
He’s been here just shy of a year and the student body disgusts him. His own body disgusts him. The world is so different from the one he had a year ago that he wants to rip it apart, undo all the seams, and go back to the older fabric underneath: he rips himself apart instead. The drinking and the fasting keep him in check, so he decides to stick with both.  
  
He stops picking up. Mac stops calling. The semester ends and summer comes and goes like a ghost. Mac is waiting tables Monday to Friday and when he isn’t he’s getting high in his mom’s basement with Charlie and some other boys Dennis doesn’t bother to learn the names of. He’s had the goddamn gall to grow in Dennis’ absence.  
  
  
*

Dennis has an assignment due on Monday; Dennis is curled on the bathroom floor, tugging his hair so hard it hurts, Dennis is saying, “Mac, what do I do, what do I  _do_ -” and Mac doesn’t answer because this is the sixth time Dennis has reached his voicemail.

(It’s the talk of the whole campus: didn’t you hear? Dee Reynolds fucking snapped last night, they took her roommate away in one ambulance and then shoved her in another - apparently their room’s still smoking, you can see it from the rooftop of the building across the road).  
  
Dennis calls again. Dennis calls again. Dennis doesn’t really hear it, the knocking on his dorm room door, but he feels it when a pair of arms heft up around his waist, the faint tang of smoke and the worn-soft collar of Mac’s dumb leather jacket that’s so easy to turn his face into as Mac’s hand grips the back of his head, pressing him closer, stroking through his hair.

“Sorry,” he says, “shit, Den, I’m sorry, I left my phone back at -”

“I don’t know what to do,” Dennis says. His voice is scratchy and hoarse. “Mac, I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to get her back.”

Mac’s hushing him like he’s crying, and it’s annoying, because he’s not. Mac’s hold on him is uncomfortably tight; Mac’s shirt smells of sweat, Mac’s breath is too-hot on his forehead - Dennis shut his eyes tight and huddles closer, and Mac lets him do it.  
  


*  
  


There are things Dennis wants that he cannot have: a veterinary scholarship, a nicer apartment, thinner thighs, better friends, lipsticks he didn’t steal from Dee’s bag.  
  
“We own a bar,” Mac says, staring up in wonderment at the sign.  
  
“We own a shit-ass ugly bar,” Dennis corrects, dryly.  
  
“Yeah, and it’s  _ours_ ,” Mac insists. He glances sideways and Dennis catches a side-view of his smile, bright and giddy and elated, making his dimples show. “Plus, the ugly part’s totally subjective, bro. Just think of it as character.”

Dennis feels kind of cheated, if he’s being honest. There are so many things out of his reach. He’d rather not add anything more to the pile. He doesn’t want to want this. If only that meant more than it does.  
  
  
*  
  
Dennis makes a system, an exceptionally efficient system, and the success of it is so perfect that he gets bored of it immediately. Dennis fucks a new girl every week; Dennis isn’t gay and he’s been doing so, so good at not thinking about the way Mac looks at him, and then Mac goes and gets him so drunk that it’s the only thing he can think about.

They were drinking about something at the beginning - a scheme gone wrong, a plan turned sour. Dennis can’t really remember, he’s too busy staring at Mac’s mouth as he downs the rest of his beer in one. Mac’s eyes are closed, lashes splayed out against his cheeks. Mac’s throat works as he swallows, swallows, swallows -

“There,” he says, breathless, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Told you I could do it.”

Dennis pushes forward and kisses him hard on the mouth. He hears the thud of a beer bottle smacking the floor, the sound of glass cracking. Mac makes a sound against his mouth, a low little half-moan, and then Dennis is the one being kissed: Dennis’ hair is being pulled and there’s a hand slipping up under his shirt, and it’s all he can do to bite at Mac’s bottom lip and give Mac everything he’s ever wanted to take. Drunk on beer and on the feeling of someone’s hands on him, and it’s all right. It’s all right. They’re kids getting it out of their systems. They won’t let it happen again.

  
*  
 

They’re pushing into their thirties, they’re riding the high that comes with a job well done, and Mac’s got him pressed up against his bedroom door, biting a trail down his neck that’s going to sit there for days.  
  
Here’s the thing: Dennis likes to play a game, sometimes, where he lays down what he wants in as unclear and vague a way as possible, just to see if Mac’s smart enough to pick up the bait.

“Do that for me,” he’d said, soft and sweet as honey, stroking his thumbs across Mac’s cheeks. “Okay, baby boy?” - and inside, hidden under the act and under everything else: _touch me like this. Just like this. You know I won’t ask you, do it anyway; touch me like this, call me names._

“So,” Mac murmurs against his skin. “Baby boy, huh?”

“Shut up,” Dennis snaps, trying to hide the way he shudders, the way he jerks forward into Mac’s fist. He can feel Mac grinning against his neck.  
  
“You looked so good today,” Mac tells him lowly, changing the angle of his hand, “so good, Den, I swear -” and Dennis can’t help it, the sound that escapes his throat, the way he chases Mac’s mouth until it’s pressed over his the way he needs -

  
*  
  


Mac’s thirty-six, Dennis is two months shy, and they don’t touch anymore.

It’s Mac’s fault, obviously. It’s been his fault since the day he walked into the goddamn bar with the confidence of the entire Catholic Church behind him and announced his latest crusade, killing whatever tentative thing was growing between them down to the roots. Dennis marries the high school sweetheart he never really had in a fit of wanting and mania and hurt and divorces her the same week. The gnawing hole deep in the pit of his chest unscabs itself and opens up like the oldest, grisliest of wounds.  
  


*  
  


They’re thirty six; thirty-seven, thirty-eight - they’re getting sicker and stranger with every passing day. It’s all right. It’s all right. Dennis hears a constant roaring in his ears; Dennis has a rational conversation with a reasonable man and is introduced to the words borderline personality disorder and a bottle of Topamax, to be taken twice daily with food and water. Dennis has strange dreams, faded at the edges, about hands stroking his thighs, soft dark hair, a laugh he knows like the back of his hand. They dance around the edges of it all like moths circling a candle - every so often, one of them darts closer, but the heat is too much to keep them there for long.  
  
  
*  
  


“Yeah,” Mac says. “I’m gay.”

His eyes are so bright. His dimples show. Dennis still hates him. Dennis hasn’t seen him smile like that in a very long time.

  
*  
  
  
“It’s a gift,” Mac says, softly. “I got it for you.”

He hadn’t told Dennis that the rules had changed - he hadn’t said a single goddamn thing - but then Mac’s never had a knack for words. That’s always been Dennis’ job.  
  
  
*  
  


_Tenderness; /ˈtɛndənəs’/; noun -_ kindness; feelings of deep affection; sensitivity to pain.

  
*  
  
  
He doesn’t mean to look at Mac so long when he says goodbye. Mac’s eyes are following him, dark and bewildered, confused, scornful, hurt - he doesn’t mean to look so long but he does, and Mac looks right back for every second, stubbornly refusing to grant Dennis even the chance of a half-decent exist. He always picks the worst times to stand his ground.  
  
  
*  
  


Six months after the flight to North Dakota, Dennis meets a boy under the bleachers of his old high school.

It’s a dark night, but it’s a warm one. The cicadas are out, humming reedily in the shadows, and the flood-lights shine down bright and brilliant white on the deserted pitch: Dennis would have to duck his head to reach the spot he once made pilgrimage to every day for four years. The space is smaller than he remembers.

“Hey,” he says. His voice isn’t shaking, but it’s a close thing.

“Fuckin’ knew you’d be late,” Mac says. He’s looking down at the ground, scuffing at the dirt with his shoes.

“I had to catch a plane,” Dennis points out. “That feels like something worth cutting me some slack for. Come on.”

Mac shoots him a look - wary, guarded, the look of something about to bolt - and Dennis is reminded by a twinge low in his chest that he’s only here because Dennis asked him to be. Dennis, of course, is here because Mac didn’t ask him to be.

“Mac,” he says, quietly.

When he kisses him there’s no glory, no victory, there’s only this: Dennis’ hands cupping his face, Mac’s stubble brushing against his palms. Mac tastes faintly sweet, Mac smells of cheap mint soap and worn-soft leather. Their mouths slide together so soft and so easy that it’s almost too much to bear. They’re sixteen, they’re forty; they’re the same and yet something new entirely. Dennis has fault lines on his brow and in the corners of his eyes and there are little flecks of grey in Mac’s beard, and Mac kisses just the way he remembers.  
  
  
*  
 

Mac takes him home and presses him down into the sheets. Mac rocks his hips slowly and pushes inside while holding Dennis’ wrists down on either side of the pillow underneath his head; Mac kisses him wet and open-mouthed and calls him sweetheart, beautiful, baby boy, Den, and Dennis makes a desperate, strangled sound in the back of his throat and claws at his back and every inch of him he can reach -

And later, just as dawn is starting to peek in under the blinds, Dennis rests his head on Mac’s chest and traces his fingers over the dark bruises he left in a messy line along the dip of his collarbone.

“How’re you gonna hide them?” he asks, sleepily. The sheets rustle. Mac ducks his head, his nose pressing into Dennis’ curls.

“Won’t bother,” he mutters. “They were always a bitch to cover before, Christ knows you’re only gonna leave more anyway.”

Dennis huffs out something that would maybe pass for a laugh, if he were more awake. One of Mac’s hands is stroking up and down over his back. The sheets smell of the same detergent he and Mac have been using for the past twenty years, Mac’s chest rises and falls beneath his cheek - and he can pinpoint it, the exact second Mac’s breathing evens out, the moment he slips into sleep. It’s as quietly familiar as a lullaby.

Dennis dips his head, noses the warm skin of Mac’s neck. He closes his eyes.

 

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted on [tumblr](https://azirapha1e.tumblr.com) and reposted here for the anon who asked!! this hasn't been proofread v thoroughly, so pls lmk if there are any glaring spelling/grammar issues x


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